In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation

Largely overshadowed by World War II’s “greatest generation” and the more vocal veterans of the Vietnam era, Korean War veterans remain relatively invisible in the narratives of both war and its aftermath. Yet, just as the beaches of Normandy and the jungles of Vietnam worked profound changes on conflict participants, the Korean Peninsula chipped away at the beliefs, physical and mental well-being, and fortitude of Americans completing wartime tours of duty there. Upon returning home, Korean War veterans struggled with home front attitudes toward the war, faced employment and family dilemmas, and wrestled with readjustment. Not unlike other wars, Korea proved a formative and defining influence on the men and women stationed in theater, on their loved ones, and in some measure on American culture. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation not only gives voice to those Americans who served in the “forgotten war” but chronicles the larger personal and collective consequences of waging war the American way.

[I]t is an excellent piece of work that tells an important story. Pash's book is a narrative history. She tells the story of the men and women who sacrificed for the greater good in Korea, while the rest of the Americans went about their everyday lives, and when the war was over quickly forgot about those who served. She tells the story of what citizenship used to mean in America., I highly recommend this book to those interested in the soldiers' experience and to the general reader who might wish to learn about the harsh war that their parents or grandparents experienced.-,, This book is the best, but also about the first, comprehensive study of American veterans of the Korean War. It is deeply researched in primary sources . . . Clear and concise writing, sharp exposition, and keen sensitivity to issues of race, gender and class will make this book useful in the classroom., No one ever referred to our Korean War soldiers as part of the Greatest Generation; yet, their war began just five years after V-J Day, and more than 36,000 of them died in service to their country. These were truly forgotten combatants of a forgotten war, but Melinda Pash has done a brilliant job of recounting the experiences of these ordinary men and women who spent three years fighting and dying on a peninsula that most Americans could not locate on a world map and soon forgot., Through obviously superb scholarship and imaginative analysis Melinda Pash has managed to capture the essential essence of that largely unheralded generation that fought the Korean War.

Melinda L. Pash received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Tennessee in 2008 and teaches at Fayetteville Technical Community College in Fayetteville, North Carolina.